


Time Again

by didoandis



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Amnesia, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Consensual Underage Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, I'm British so's my spelling, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multiple Orgasms, Not Beta Read, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Canon, Sort Of, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24218392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/didoandis/pseuds/didoandis
Summary: Things you need to know:It’s 1264. You seem to be losing your memory.  Also Geralt likes you now.Jaskier’s losing time. Geralt’s not sure he can live through the last two decades again, especially not backwards.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 129
Kudos: 1064





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> More details (with spoilers) on the underage sex and mildly dubious consent tags in the end notes of chapter 2.

### Prologue: Later

He loses track of time after the first day. He could have noted it, scratched a mark into the wall for each new sunrise, but he’s not sure there’s any point in knowing. 

They bring food and water twice a day, and he eats it. She comes herself, every day, or maybe every other day, and talks to him, but he knows what she’s going to say so he doesn’t listen. It won’t make any difference. 

It’s very quiet. 

After a while the music in his head goes away, too. He thinks about giving up then, but he’s always been stubborn, and there’s enough anger left in him to not make it that easy. 

And then, one day, it stops being quiet. 

He blinks. He’s been drifting, eyes closed, the sun on his face and his thoughts revolving drearily – _would it be so bad?... Yes, yes it would... You could run… But they’d just find you again_ – when they’re interrupted by the sounds of steel on steel, somewhere far below. 

He sits up, heart racing. There’s nothing in the room but him, and the tray with his breakfast on, and the bucket in the corner, none of which are weapons. Though he figures throwing the bucket at someone might at least make them pause long enough for him to run. 

Before he can put the idea into action, the door explodes. A whirlwind of iron and wood, controlled somehow. He flinches back, flinging one arm over his eyes instinctively. 

When he looks again, the door is in pieces on the floor and two of the most beautiful people he’s ever seen are standing in the doorway. 

The man is tall, dressed in black. His hair’s an unnatural shade of grey, his eyes an unnatural shade of gold, and he’s carrying a sword in each hand. Julian saw him last when he fled the inn, before he was brought back here, when the man called him Jaskier even though that was a name no one in the world knew. The woman’s wearing a formal gown, which seems unlikely for storming a mansion, but the coiffured midnight hair and immaculate make up implies she’s not someone who knows what dressing down means. 

It is, to say the least, unexpected. 

The woman swears as she walks forward, and twitches a wrist as if she’s tossing something distasteful away. He feels a cold draught of air expand his lungs, coil up through his throat. 

“Oh,” he says, and lifts a hand to his lips, presses his fingers against his mouth to feel himself speaking. “Oh, that’s—”

The man is kneeling in front of him, which is strange, since Julian didn’t even hear him moving. He’s put a hand on Julian’s shoulder and is staring at him like no one has ever looked at him before, like the very sight of him is a blessing. 

“I’m sorry,” Julian says. “Do I know you?”

The man winces, his golden eyes tightening at the edges. A complicated expression crosses his face – something painful, maybe even something like grief. Julian tries to work it out, feels like he would be able to, if he weren’t so confused. And maybe a little horny, but mostly confused. 

“No,” the man says. “Not anymore.”

### Chapter One: Geralt, before

#### One year lost

In hindsight, Geralt should have realised something was up with Jaskier earlier. In his defence, Jaskier is always a little strange, and Geralt tends to let his strangeness wash over him, rather than try and follow it. The bard’s brain moves faster than most people’s. Geralt’s never been able to keep up, and Jaskier doesn’t mind as long as Geralt pays attention when it’s important. Geralt’s getting better at noticing when things are important, and Jaskier’s better at telling him when they are, too. 

They’ve been in Oxenfurt just over a week. Jaskier’s in his element, bouncing from inn to inn and shop to shop, meeting up with old friends, making new ones. He seems to know everyone in the city, from the street urchins to the university professors. It’s odd to see him here, so much at home. Geralt’s never accompanied him to Oxenfurt before. For years, he thought this was Jaskier’s place, in the same way that Kaer Morhen was Geralt’s, and that it was good they had their own separate places to be. 

They’re entirely entangled, now, and Geralt’s an idiot for not doing it sooner. He likes seeing Jaskier like this, joyful and relaxed. 

Really, he should have noticed when that changed. 

The tavern they’re staying in belongs to old friends of Jaskier’s, old enough and trusted enough that even Yennefer has started to relax somewhat, and Ciri is in her element, making friends with the bar staff and bothering the cooks. Oxenfurt feels far away from the war, still; there’s no love for the Nilfgaardians here; and there are enough Redanian soldiers and spies monitoring visitors that Yennefer says they should be safe from harm. They’re safe enough, anyway, for something like a break. 

Jaskier’s there to play some harvest festival in a couple of weeks. Yennefer’s making use of the library. Ciri’s having fun. Geralt’s just… happy, in ways he never thought his life would allow. 

He’s eating breakfast in the tavern’s main room with Ciri that morning. It’s plain food, an oat porridge, but well made and seasoned, and in Ciri’s case, drowning in honey. She’s on to her second bowl when Jaskier emerges, always a late sleeper when left to his own devices. His gaze scans the room, distant and a little confused, and then his face lights up when he sees the two of them. 

“Geralt!” he says, gladly, and walks over. “How wonderful to see you. What are you doing here this fine morning? And, if I’m not mistaken—” he sketches a deep bow— “in the presence of royalty, no less.”

Ciri flinches like she’s been struck. Geralt hisses. Jaskier looks completely taken aback. 

“For fuck’s _sake_ ,” Geralt says, “I know you’re friends with these people, but that doesn’t mean growing careless.” 

“Yes,” Jaskier stutters. “Yes, I— sorry. Don’t know what came over me. Apologies, dear child.” 

“The walls have ears,” Ciri tells him solemnly. 

“They do!” Jaskier agrees. “Just like corn. Is it corn? Why does corn have ears?” He’s rambling, which Geralt takes to be a sign of guilt, or possibly embarrassment. Ciri seems to enjoy it though, so he leaves it be. 

Not long after, Yennefer joins them – being an even later sleeper than Jaskier – and takes a seat on the bench beside Ciri. “Did you sleep well, Fiona?” she asks, and listens with what seems like genuine interest to Ciri’s story of a dream involving a frog, and a palace, and a garden that you could walk in for days. Jaskier’s looking between the pair of them, frowning a little, like he’s making notes, or possibly aiming to turn the dream into a ballad. He’s done that before. 

“All right?” Geralt asks him softly, brushing his knuckles over Jaskier’s arm, and Jaskier yelps. 

“Fine!” he says. “Quite fine. Couldn’t be better.” Geralt can smell a faint edge of anxiety coming from him – but he’s generally jumpy, and also, Geralt scolded him before, and Jaskier still reacts badly to that, all this time later. He should have been kinder. It was just Jaskier being dramatic, seeing they were alone in the room. No harm done. 

Jaskier goes out after breakfast, and returns with a broadsheet and a puzzled expression, then retreats to their room to fetch his notebook and his lute, which generally means he’ll be lost in composition for the foreseeable future. There’s no getting any sense out of him on those days. 

So Geralt does notice that Jaskier is acting a little… off, that morning in Oxenfurt, but he assumes that Jaskier will tell him if it’s anything serious, and carries on with the day. 

And if there were other signs that he looks back on later – occasions when Jaskier paused in the middle of a conversation or stopped in the middle of a familiar street and seemed lost or far away for an instant – at the time Geralt just chalked it up to regular absentmindedness, and ignored it.

#### Two years lost

On the second day, Geralt wakes up to the sound of Jaskier having a panic attack. 

They’re not unusual; Jaskier’s always been prone to bad dreams. Geralt’s never asked about them – he tried once, and it was about the only time Jaskier was quiet for more than five minutes – and anyway, there’s plenty of terrible memories for Jaskier’s sleeping mind to throw at him. During the years they travelled together, Geralt used to turn over in his bedroll and feign sleep until Jaskier had got himself under control. Even then, he felt the urge to reach out, but he never did. He regrets it bitterly now. 

Jaskier’s left the bed, which is less usual; he’s huddled on the chair by the window, curled into himself. Must have been a particularly bad one. Geralt goes to kneel in front of him, takes his hands and starts circling his thumbs in Jaskier’s palms. “Jaskier,” he says, softly. “Listen to me. It was just a dream. You’re fine.”

Jaskier stares at him, blinking. His face is tight with misery. He looks young, and scared. “What are you _doing_ here?” he asks. 

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else,” Geralt says gruffly. “Yenn and Ciri are next door. We’re all safe.” 

“ _Yenn’s_ here?” Jaskier closes his eyes, throws his head back dramatically. “Of course she is. Fuck.” His breathing’s slowing a little, though, so Geralt keeps chafing his hands, steadily, giving Jaskier something to focus on outside his own head. 

“It’s all right,” he says. “You’re all right.” 

“I’m all right,” Jaskier repeats, slowly. “But. The mountain, Geralt—”

_Shit_. Geralt knew he dreamed about it, of course, knew he thought about it, even though two years have passed now. But he hates to be reminded of it, hates to see the imprint of the panic and pain that he caused. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“Um,” Jaskier says. He pulls away from Geralt’s hands, turns his head to look out of the window. “We’re in Oxenfurt,” he says. He sounds completely surprised. It must have been a _really_ bad dream. 

“We are,” Geralt agrees. “You feeling better?”

Jaskier’s eyeing Geralt a little warily. “Oh. Yes. Thank you.” Geralt gets up, goes to get dressed, give him some space to collect himself. 

“I’ll fetch breakfast, if you like.” 

“Yes,” Jaskier says, faintly. “That would be… kind.” 

Geralt _hmmms_ , and fetches breakfast. When he returns, Jaskier’s sitting with his composition book in his lap, looking somewhat dazed. He eats the bread and cheese swiftly, and moves to pull on his breeches and doublet. 

“I thought I’d take a walk,” he says. “Revisit some old haunts.” 

“Want company?” Geralt asks. 

Jaskier clutches his notebook to his chest. His heartbeat is faster than usual. Geralt knows something is up. He also knows Jaskier will tell him, when he’s ready. 

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Just need to clear my head.” 

Geralt nods. “I said I’d take Ciri to see them setting up for the festival,” he reminds Jaskier. “See you back here for dinner?”

The bard smiles at him, soft and unexpectedly fond, the way he used to look at Geralt when they met up again on the path after months spent apart. “I’ll be here,” he says. “Of course.” 

Jaskier plays in the tavern that evening. Geralt and Ciri watch; they don’t always, but after Jaskier’s dream that morning Geralt feels the need to be nearby – to make sure Jaskier’s safe, as well as, perhaps, to prove things are different now. Ciri loves it, clapping her hands along with the choruses and sniggering behind her hands at the bawdiest lines. Geralt can Calanthe glaring at him sometimes. This is about as far from palace life as you can get. Then again, Calanthe was raising armies when she was a teenager, so maybe she wouldn’t care about her granddaughter understanding a few innuendos. 

A lot of the people in the audience know Jaskier, one way or another; he pulls a few fellow musicians up to perform with him at intervals, and others shout requests. He’s in his element, moving from floor-stomping crowd-pleaser to crooning ballad without it ever seeming unlikely or forced, beaming at how well the night’s going. It’s a world away from how he was this morning, tense and uneasy. He’s always most energised when performing (whether on stage, or in bed) and yet it seems greater than that, more like a weight has been lifted. 

The fire is fading into ash and the candles guttering, and Ciri is fast asleep with her head on Geralt’s shoulder, when someone shouts “ _Her Sweet Kiss!_ ”. Jaskier’s fingers slip on the strings, a jangled discordant noise, and Geralt sees his flushed cheeks pale slightly. “How do you—” he says, and then stops. Tries to smile. “Uh, not tonight, Szymon, eh? How about something more cheerful to send you on your way.” Then he breaks into a song that Geralt doesn’t know, but which must be popular, as most of the inn lifts their voices for the refrains. 

After Kasha the innkeeper shuts the doors, and Geralt shifts Ciri into bed, Yennefer reappears from wherever she’s been all day. Geralt doesn’t ask, and Yenn usually doesn’t say; he knows she has contacts in the underworld of the city, both human and not, and while Geralt never feels the urge to slay anyone or anything keeping out of trouble, he’s aware that some of the people Yenn goes to meet may fall the wrong side of that line. 

They share a last cup of wine and catch up on the gossip while Jaskier dozes in a chair by the last light of the fire. Talk of troop movements, of Nilfgaard licking its wounds while readying for further attack, of the news the refugees bring out of Cintra. The whole Continent is on the move it seems, though it feels far away from this cosy room, this quiet building, with Ciri safe upstairs. 

After Yennefer leaves to join Ciri in their room, Geralt rouses Jaskier, who stumbles up the stairs after him, half asleep on his feet. He strips down to his shirt and then freezes, looking from the bed to Geralt and back again for a long moment. 

“What?” Geralt asks, as he undresses and slides under the covers. 

“I thought,” Jaskier says. “Nothing, never mind.” He pivots to the table by the window, scribbles a couple of lines in his notebook and then blows out the candle before getting in bed. “Sorry, had to write something down before I forget.”

“Hmmm,” Geralt complains, but sleepily, and moves to roll an arm over him. Jaskier’s a little cold, his muscles a little tense, and Geralt breathes softly on the back of his neck and waits for him to warm up. 

“Why did you go to get Ciri?” Jaskier whispers instead, into the hush and dark of the night.

Geralt pauses. Jaskier’s never asked that before, and he always assumed he understood. But then, this morning, Jaskier woke with the memory of Geralt walking away from him sharp in his mind, so maybe it doesn’t seem so obvious right now. 

“I didn’t want to believe in the ties that bound me,” Geralt says. “But they remained. And so I decided to see what happened if I pulled them closer, rather than trying to push them away.” 

Jaskier shifts. “And how are you finding it?” 

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, pulling _him_ a little closer, “do you really need to ask?”

“No,” Jaskier says, after a time, the tension in his shoulders finally dissipating as he relaxes into the hold. “Apparently not.”

#### Seven years lost

The morning comes in quiet and clear. Jaskier turned over in the night, his forehead nearly pressed against Geralt’s as he snores, little murmurs of air breaking the silence. Geralt casts his senses out into the next room and finds it empty. Yennefer and Ciri must have gone out already. He lifts a hand to brush Jaskier’s hair away from his face. “Jaskier,” he says, softly. “You awake?”

It’s not fair, really, but Jaskier rouses anyway, blinking sleep from his eyes as he does so. He smiles, eyelids falling closed again, and Geralt leans forward to kiss him, tightening his grasp on the back of Jaskier’s neck. 

“Mmmm,” Jaskier says. “That’s nice.” He’s warm and crumpled and only half aware, his words slurring together.

“Mmmm,” Geralt says back, grinning a little, and moves to deepen the kiss, hand moving down to trace the curve of Jaskier’s spine. He wriggles a little under the touch, opens his eyes again and then—

Then there’s a flurry of movement, a kind of squawk as Jaskier cries, “ _Geralt?_ ” and his hands thrust forward so hard the momentum pushes him back off the bed and he lands with a thud on the floor. “Ow,” he finishes. “Fuck, fuck, what the fuck?”

Geralt has shot up to sitting, adrenaline racing like he’s been attacked, but it’s just Jaskier, picking himself up, brushing dust off his backside and glaring. “Not fucking funny!” he says. 

“Jaskier?” Geralt asks. He looks normal. Slightly shocked, but otherwise fine. “What are you doing?”

“What am _I_ doing?” Jaskier splutters, scrubbing at his face. “What are _you_ doing? Is this a dream? I was asleep!”

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says. Jaskier’s never minded being woken up like this before, but he shouldn’t have assumed. “Come back to bed, let me make it up to you.”

Some incredibly complicated look crosses Jaskier’s face: surprise, fear, guilt, lust, longing, grief, determination. “Um,” he says and swallows. “Sure! Why not!”

He slips gingerly back into the bed and lies ramrod straight as Geralt nestles against him, running his fingers down his chest. “Sorry to startle you,” he says, and reaches for Jaskier’s cock, which lifts under his touch. 

Jaskier makes a noise that sounds a bit like _urkle_. “That’s definitely startling!” he says. Geralt props himself up on one elbow to look at him properly, finds him staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide, biting his lip. “Did you… did you just… wake up and decide this was how you wanted to start your day?” 

“Yes,” Geralt says, frowning at him, and leans in for a kiss. 

Jaskier kisses back, frantic and enthusiastic and a little messy, before Geralt takes a firmer grip on his cock and he takes a strangled breath in and yelps, “oh, gods, I’m going to hell, I’m going to hell, Geralt, I can’t believe I’m saying this but are you feeling all right?”

Geralt lets go and rolls back, feeling somewhat annoyed now. “I _was_ ,” he says. 

“Just,” Jaskier says, sitting up again so he can gesture wildly. “What the fuck! What about Yennefer?”

The annoyance fades and starts to be replaced by an edge of concern. Did Jaskier hit his head when he fell? “What about Yennefer? She’s not here.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Jaskier says, and his face falls; he looks completely distraught. “Oh, of course, well, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that, I’m sorry. I wish I could, Melitele knows I do, but I can’t.” 

“Do what?” Geralt growls.

Jaskier makes a surprisingly eloquent shape in the air with his right hand. “Be a… convenience,” he says, “for you to work off whatever you’re feeling right now. It’s not fair, please don’t ask it of me.” 

“You’re many things,” Geralt says, “but I wouldn’t call you convenient.”

“I know,” Jaskier says, and _fuck_ , are those tears in his eyes? “I’m sorry. Can we just, I don’t know, forget this and go back to normal?”

“This _is_ normal!” Geralt says. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with _you_?” Jaskier hisses back, and then his face clears. “Oh, something’s wrong with you! Is it a spell?” 

Geralt makes an incoherent sound of frustration and gets out of bed. He turns to glare and then stops and stares instead because Jaskier is different, in some indefinable way that he didn’t see before. His hair is slightly the wrong shade of brown, his cheeks a little sharper, the skin around his eyes doesn’t crinkle the right way as he peers up at Geralt. “Jaskier,” he says, slowly, carefully, “how old are you?”

“Um,” Jaskier says. “I… is that relevant?” and when Geralt looms over him, he says, “thirty-five, I’m thirty-five, wow, I don’t think you’ve ever asked before.” 

Geralt sits back down, gracelessly, and buries his head in his hands. Behind him Jaskier says, worriedly, “was that the wrong answer?”

_Fuck_. He needs Yennefer, now.

Jaskier keeps staring at Ciri. Geralt can tell it’s bothering her, so he clicks his fingers in front of the bard’s eyes and says, “you should be used to it by now, stop it.” 

“Strangely enough, Geralt, I have not got used to the fact that the child I last saw at her seventh birthday party is a teenager.” He looks over at Ciri. “Sorry if I’m being a pain, your highness.”

“Don’t call me that,” Ciri says, more patiently than Geralt expects, given it’s the third time she’s had to remind him. “I’m in hiding, remember?”

“Of course,” Jaskier says, and bows a little, and then winces. “Sorry, sorry.”

They’re sitting in Kasha the innkeeper’s private quarters, Kasha herself having been swept aside easily by Yennefer, who cannot be denied when she’s in this kind of mood. Jaskier’s perched on the settle, clutching his lute rather like a child with a favoured toy; Yennefer’s pacing the room; Ciri is sitting neatly at the kitchen table; Geralt standing guard by the door. 

“Two days ago,” Ciri says, “you called me princess, d’you remember?”

“Two days ago is seven years in the future apparently,” Jaskier says sourly, “so no, I can’t say I do.” 

Ciri turns to Geralt instead. “He did,” she says, “and we thought it was careless, but maybe he’d already forgotten?”

Geralt thinks about the way Jaskier acted that day, slightly on edge, confused, and then about yesterday. What if the vivid memory of the mountain wasn’t a flashback or a dream but something that, to the Jaskier of the day before, had only just happened?

“He didn’t play _Her Sweet Kiss_ last night,” he says. “I thought he didn’t want to, but what if he couldn’t remember how to?”

“ _He_ is right here,” Jaskier says. “Stop talking about him like he isn’t. I may be forgetful but I can still hear you. Also, what’s _Her Sweet Kiss_? Is it one of mine? Is it good?” He puts his lute down and picks up his notebook, riffling through the pages. 

“So it’s been going on for three days,” Yennefer says thoughtfully. “And you’re not forgetful, Jaskier, you’re actually younger. Your body’s different, your mind doesn’t feel the same.” 

“I’ve had quite enough of you feeling things,” Jaskier spits at her. “You feeling things has a tendency to bring buildings down on people’s heads!” 

Yennefer looks pained. Ciri looks fascinated. Geralt can sense a headache coming on. He had forgotten, it turns out, quite how much they’d aggravated each other, before the mountain made them uneasy fellows in their shared anger at him, and then Ciri united them in determination to protect her. 

“So it’s a spell,” Geralt says. 

“It’s a _very good_ spell,” Yennefer corrects him. “I can barely detect it now I’m actually aware of it. And it would take a lot of care to pull this off without destroying him, either physically or mentally.”

“Can you reverse it?”

“I’m not sure,” Yennefer says. “Not easily. It’s not really my area, this kind of working.”

“I told you,” Jaskier mutters to Ciri. “Buildings. Heads. Screaming and craziness and dark magic.”

“Jaskier, shut up,” Geralt says. He loves the bard, he does, but he’s a lot to take right now. He knows it’s because Jaskier’s panicking but Geralt is panicking too, deep down, where he’d never admit it. This is something he doesn’t understand, and can’t fight, and in the meantime, Jaskier’s looking at him like he’s… not a stranger, of course, but not like he’s _his_. 

Jaskier grumbles, but shuts up, flicking slowly through the notebook. 

“So what are we going to do?” Ciri asks, proving again that she’s the most grown up of all of them in some ways. Geralt looks at Yennefer. 

“I can ask around,” she says. “It’s the kind of magic you’d probably have to maintain, from not too far a distance, at least till the spell’s complete. If it only started a couple of days ago, the mage is likely still in the city. And there are some volumes in the library that might cover this type of working too.”

“What do you mean till the spell’s complete?” Jaskier asks, sharply, self-interest warring with dislike and winning. 

Yennefer shrugs. “By my count you’ve forgotten seven years in three days. Who knows how long they want it to go on for?”

“But why?” Jaskier demands. “I’m just… I travel the Continent and sing, who would care how old I am?”

Geralt feels cold. “Could be it’s about what you can remember,” he says. “If someone had met you on the street yesterday and asked if you were travelling with a young woman called Ciri, you’d have said yes, wouldn’t you?”

“...yes,” Jaskier says, slowly. “I would have today, if you hadn’t noticed anything. Fuck.” 

“All right,” Yennefer says briskly. “Ciri, you’re coming with me. Geralt, stay here and see if anyone tries to make contact. Jaskier, I don’t care what you do.” She sweeps out the room. 

Ciri hovers briefly by the door and adds, “she doesn’t mean that!” before following. 

Geralt and Jaskier are left looking at each other. 

“Want to pick up where we left off?” Jaskier asks after the silence has stretched enough to become uncomfortable. 

Geralt hadn’t known what to expect but he didn’t expect this. “You mean…”

“I mean,” Jaskier snaps, “that I have been pining after you for the best part of two decades and apparently we _do_ that now, and there is no way that I’m going to pass up the opportunity to have my first time for a second time.” 

He looks angry, hopeful, a little uncertain, and surprisingly young. Geralt knows he’s hurt this Jaskier – the djinn, Yennefer, all the times he was inconsiderate or rude or reticent – but he hasn’t broken his heart, yet. “There are things you don’t know,” he says. 

“Don’t care,” Jaskier says. “I can see you building up to denying yourself out of some misplaced guilt, so I’m just going to ignore all that. Whatever it was, you’re sorry and I got over it. Or I will get over it. Fuck, tenses are hard. Right?” 

“Right,” Geralt says, and can’t help the fond smile that comes to his face. Jaskier’s a complicated man, deep down. But he likes to make things simple. 

“So take me to bed,” Jaskier says, “and we can work it out later.” 

Geralt does as he’s told. 

It’s a strange kind of coupling. Not the easy, known thing they’ve grown accustomed to. Jaskier’s body reacts the same, more or less – Geralt has learned what he likes – but the flush on his skin, the joy and wonder in his eyes, that’s new. Even on their previous first time, Jaskier was old enough and hurt enough to be a little guarded. He has no such defences now. 

He’s lying half on the bed, half off; spread legs over Geralt’s shoulders where Geralt is kneeling on the floor, bent over to suck his cock. Jaskier’s resting on his elbows, angled up so he can watch as Geralt lifts and lowers, teasing at the head before taking him all the way down. Jaskier’s biting his lip, panting as he exhales, almost laughing as he inhales. 

“Oh,” he says, suddenly, “Geralt, I’m—” and then he comes, as Geralt knew he was going to, was waiting for him to do. He swallows, then lets Jaskier slip out of his mouth, lifts his legs sideways onto the bed as he shakes through his release. Geralt lies next to him, stroking his hair. “Mmmm,” Jaskier says, warmth and sleepiness in his voice. “That was lovely.”

“Not over,” Geralt says, “if you don’t want it to be.”

Jaskier rolls over, interested. “What did you have in mind, witcher dear? Are you going to ravish me?” 

Geralt smiles and swats at his arse. “Don’t make it sound like you’re some innocent,” he says. 

“I’ll have you know—” Jaskier starts, and then gives it up. “All right, fair. What would the man of the world like to do with the not-so-blushing, far-from virgin?”

“Well,” says Geralt, “I could fuck you.” 

Jaskier’s cock stirs to life a little. _That’s_ different. Or at least faster. “Could you,” he says, a little breathlessly, fingers brushing Geralt’s fully erect cock, feather-light. He doesn’t know Geralt’s body, doesn’t know that he likes a firm grip there and a light touch on his balls, and Geralt has no idea if this version of Jaskier will ever find that out. But he’s determined to make this first time good for him, a memory he might get to keep, untroubled, unweighted by history or pain. 

“I could,” he agrees, and goes to fetch the oil from his bag. Jaskier turns to watch him, eyes large and faintly disbelieving. 

“I keep waiting to wake up,” he says, as Geralt returns to the bed. “Find out this has all been but a beautiful dream…” _He_ looks beautiful. Geralt kisses him instead of saying so, and Jaskier surges into it, eager and sloppy. “A very good dream,” he adds, softly, into Geralt’s mouth. “How d’you want me, darling?” 

Geralt flips him over, lifts him up so he’s on all fours, and Jaskier’s cock goes halfway full at the show of strength. His Jaskier would have laughed, said something cutting, and he freezes for a moment, waiting for it, feels a strange kind of sadness when it doesn’t come. He distracts himself by starting to open Jaskier up, losing himself instead in the way Jaskier shakes as he adds a second, then a third finger, drowning in the sensation of Jaskier around him, the stream of consciousness nonsense falling from his lips. And then slowly, slowly, pushing in.

“ _Oh_ ,” Jaskier murmurs, hushed and unusually brief. “Geralt,” he says, and the word is worshipful. 

Geralt moves, gently at first, rocking into a rhythm he knows well but which has Jaskier keening, scrabbling at the bed as the pace builds. He waits till Jaskier comes, crying out with a pleasure tinged only slightly by pain, and then lets himself follow in a blaze that empties him of all thought. 

After, he finds himself half atop Jaskier still, hands clutching his hips. Jaskier turns his head, blinking, dazed, and says, “thank you.”

“It wasn’t a gift,” Geralt says, sharp. 

“Still,” Jaskier says, half asleep now. “I appreciate it.” 

Geralt goes to fetch a cloth, cleans them both up and tucks Jaskier under the covers as he starts to snore. 

He feels unsettled, and he’s not entirely sure why. 

Later, after Jaskier has woken, washed, complained about how sore he is till Geralt took pity and massaged his back which led to a second time that undid the washing… later, he leaves Jaskier with his notebook and lute and goes down to the tavern to wait for Yennefer. 

When she does arrive, she takes one look at him, sends Ciri to go play in the kitchen, and sits across the table from him. A glass appears at her right hand, fills itself with good red wine, and she takes a long drink and regards him steadily. 

“ _Really_ , Geralt?”

Geralt can’t prevent a slight smirk lifting his lips. “Kept him out of trouble,” he points out. 

“The two of you are a menace,” Yennefer sighs. “I can feel him up there, and the smugness is quite spectacular.” 

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says, deciding to change the subject. “He doesn’t know not to resent you.”

Yennefer waves a hand, dismissing the idea that Jaskier’s reaction could have touched her in the slightest. Geralt doesn’t entirely believe it, but to go further down that road leads to all kinds of subjects better left alone. 

“We have other problems than the bard’s petty jealousies,” she says. “I couldn’t glean any gossip about any mage capable of this being in town, which probably means that it’s someone who’s been under the radar a long, long time, hiring themselves out to the highest bidder. I’ll keep asking, but it feels like a dead end. And what little I could learn about magics that manipulate time and memory implies the spells are best not interfered with, unless you want to destroy the subject body and soul.” 

“So we’re nowhere,” Geralt says, and when Yennefer winces, adds, “I didn’t mean – I don’t blame you. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” Yennefer says, firm and a little cold. “If it happens again tomorrow, I’m going to take Ciri back to Kaer Morhen, out of danger.” 

It feels like a cut, one so fine you don’t even notice the pain straight away. 

Yennefer sees his reaction and softens. “And now I’m the one who didn’t mean it. I’ll come back, Geralt, of course I’ll help you both. But Ciri needs to be safe first.” 

“You’re right,” he admits. “There’s no knowing what he’ll do or say; or what the person doing this is after. It’ll be easier if we don’t have to worry about her as well.”

“All right,” Yennefer says. Then she pauses. “And if it does happen again – what will _you_ do?”

Geralt hasn’t thought about that. He considers Jaskier, younger again, waking up in a place he won’t remember reaching, but at least not with a stranger. “I won’t tell him,” he says. “It’ll be easier that way.”

Yennefer watches him steadily over the rim of her glass. He’s sure she disagrees, but unsure why, and she keeps her own counsel. “Well, then, we have the start of a plan.”

He closes his eyes, lost for a moment in missing Jaskier – the real Jaskier, his Jaskier – so much that it aches somewhere deep inside him. “We have to fix this,” he says. 

“We will,” she promises. 

They eat together, the four of them. Jaskier is quiet, chatting to Ciri from time to time, glaring at Yennefer when he doesn’t think she’s looking. Yenn maintains a chilly, formal politeness, a sparkle in her eyes that speaks to amusement and, Geralt thinks, to hurt hiding a layer beneath that. Geralt himself says nothing at all. 

When he and Jaskier return to the bed, they lie in silence for a while. The candles are out, and the moonlight draws shadows on Jaskier’s face, making the familiar strange. Jaskier shifts, and asks, “If I lose my memories again tomorrow, will you tell me? About this?” – indicating the way their bodies slot together, warm beneath the covers. 

“Yes,” Geralt lies, and stays wakeful and watching until Jaskier sleeps.

#### Sixteen years lost

He knows from the minute he opens his eyes that it’s happened, and that the time lost is significant. Jaskier’s lines have gone entirely; his face is rounder; his hair longer than he wears it now. Geralt carefully moves away, untangling Jaskier’s arms and legs from around his body until he’s free to leave the bed. He used to do that, almost without thinking, assuming the bard would be embarrassed if he knew how close they’d got overnight. Now, he knows it wasn’t truly Jaskier’s feelings he was trying to guard against. 

Jaskier yawns as Geralt gets up. “What time izzit?” he asks. 

“Morning,” Geralt says, patiently, and one blue eye opens to glare at him. “What do you remember?” 

“That’s an odd question,” Jaskier says, opening his other eye. “Pray tell, is there a story behind it?” He smells a little anxious, a lot lustful. That was a common scent, when Jaskier was younger. He learned to control it better, over the years, and these days of course it’s present, but generally sated. Geralt has almost forgotten the taste of it, the years he spent turning away from the invitation that was hinted at but never outright expressed. 

“You got into a fight last night,” Geralt says. “Bumped your head. Thought it might have scrambled the few brains you have in that skull.” And, oh, it’s so easy – that old pattern right there, waiting for him to fall back into. 

“I appreciate your concern,” Jaskier says sniffily. “I’m sure if I stooped to anything so uncouth as a brawl there was an excellent reason. Probably defending a fair maiden’s honour!” 

Geralt snorts. 

“All right, don’t tell me,” Jaskier grumbles. “Are we in Cintra still at least? I have a booking I really can’t pass up.” 

“Oxenfurt,” Geralt tells him. 

Jaskier sits up, panic written all over his face. “I was to play in front of royalty! How much time’s gone by? Did that happen?” 

“It did,” Geralt tells him, while he feels his slow heart go icy and still. Of all the places the spell could have stranded him, why did it have to be Pavetta’s betrothal? “You were feted. The talk of the town. I haven’t forgiven you for the clothes you made me wear, mind you.” 

“Oh, well, fine then,” Jaskier says dismissively. “As long as I was there. Queen Calanthe isn’t one to forget a slight easily. Was it a fine affair? Did I make any delightful new acquaintances? Was there a fight? There usually is, at that court.” 

“Hmmm,” Geralt says and lets Jaskier throw a pillow at him for his reticence. He lacks the wit to invent a story, and he’s certainly not going to tell Jaskier the truth. 

Yennefer and Ciri are at the table by the door when they enter the room downstairs, Jaskier still grumbling that the blow to his head has robbed him – _robbed me, Geralt!_ – of the knowledge of a superlative performance. Geralt steers him to a table by the bar, sits himself down so he can meet Yennefer’s eyes. She raises a brow at him; he shakes his head; and she sighs, before ushering Ciri up. They’ll portal to Kaer Morhen straight away, Geralt knows, and Yenn will settle her overnight before returning to Oxenfurt tomorrow. Ciri is tired, and tearful; she turns back to look at them and Geralt tries to reassure her with a nod before they leave the room. 

Jaskier watches them go, frowning. 

“Do you know them?” he asks Geralt. 

“No,” Geralt says. “The woman’s a sorceress, from the looks of her.”

“Huh,” Jaskier says. He seems puzzled, thoughtful. “I could swear… there’s something familiar, you know, like when you turn a corner in a town you’ve never been before but are certain you’ve seen the same shops, the same array of people…”

“I’ve been to so many towns they do all look the same now,” Geralt says. 

“Fine, reduce all my poetry to the dull everyday,” Jaskier says. “Why are we in Oxenfurt anyway? I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of place.” 

“You wanted to winter here,” Geralt says. “My path coincided. I’ll be moving on in the morning.” 

Jaskier dips his head, accepting this. He’s still staring in the direction of the stairs, frowning slightly, as if seeking something he knows he’s lost without knowing what it is. Geralt wonders what it’s like inside his head, if there is any awareness of a gap. He wonders if, when they fix it – and they will fix it, if it takes the rest of his life – Jaskier will remember any of this. Will remember how Geralt lied to him. 

“So we have a day, then,” Jaskier says at last, returning his gaze and attention to Geralt. And Geralt has forgotten that, too – the fascination, the hunger. He used to feel as if Jaskier would feast on him, if he let him, strip him bare. He didn’t know then that it was possible to give and give and not lose anything. It wasn’t like that with Yennefer, much though he loved her; their love was always a war. It was Ciri who taught him that some feelings could never run dry, and Jaskier who compounded the lesson. 

“Hmmm,” Geralt agrees. 

“Unless you had plans,” Jaskier says, a little reticent, “there are places I’d show you, if you cared to see them?”

Geralt almost refuses – he would have refused, when Jaskier was truly in his mid-twenties – but it seems cruel now to maintain the character of a Geralt years dead; and besides, the chances are Jaskier will forget all this in the morning anyway. “No,” he says. “No plans.” 

And Jaskier’s delighted smile is almost enough to make him feel better. 

It’s a good day. The kind of day that has always been rare in Geralt’s life. No urgent need for coin, no imminent battle, no concerns beyond the obvious. He lets Jaskier lead him on a meandering route from university to river, tavern to concert hall, market to townhouse, all with a story attached from his student days: bawdy, funny, boastful, occasionally sad. Jaskier haggles for lute strings, drags Geralt to the best baker in town and is heartbroken when they find the shop in new hands (Geralt drags him away again before he can ask questions about how long it’s been since the last owner sold it). They buy cheap ale and less-cheap pies from a stall by the city gates, and it’s nearly dusk before they return to the tavern, Jaskier stumbling slightly. 

He tries to negotiate free board from Kasha by offering to play, and Kasha catches Geralt’s eye before apologising and saying that they have another entertainer lined up that night, perhaps tomorrow, master Jaskier? And Jaskier slumps a little but lets Geralt shepherd him upstairs easily enough. 

Geralt goes through his supplies and sharpens his daggers, as if he truly is leaving in the morning, and Jaskier re-strings and tunes his lute. Afterwards, he picks up his notebook and reads the last few pages, scribbling new lines, crossing out old ones. A tune he’s not happy with, Geralt assumes, and is briefly amused to think of Jaskier composing in collaboration with other Jaskiers through time. 

“Thank you for today,” Jaskier says, some minutes later. He looks up, his eyes clear and bright. “You didn’t have to spend all of it following me around.” 

Geralt feels faintly sick. The Jaskier of yesterday thanked him too, fucked out and sweaty, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. So many years they spent together with Jaskier grateful for scraps and Geralt feeling benevolent for casting a few his way. It wasn’t fair, any of it. He’ll remember that; how much he owes. 

“I had a good time,” he says, gruffly, and enjoys the surprise and pride and pleasure that crosses Jaskier’s face. 

“Me too,” Jaskier says. He writes a few more sentences, then shuts the book with a snap. “Shall we turn in? I guess you’ll be wanting to set off early.” 

Geralt nods, and lies down in the bed, his whole body aching with the awareness of the space between them, the careful way Jaskier holds himself angled away. 

He waits until he’s sure Jaskier’s asleep before he releases the words he’s been holding behind his teeth all day. “I miss you,” he says. “Don’t leave me.” 

Jaskier murmurs something under his breath, and Geralt follows the sound into darkness.

#### Twenty-five years lost

Geralt wakes up on a surge of adrenaline, reacting to a threat before he’s even conscious. He sits up in bed, casting his eyes around desperately. The bed, the unshuttered window, his bags by the door, swords propped next to them, Jaskier’s lute in the far corner. Jaskier, by the window, back pressed against the wall, wearing yesterday’s clothes. They sit oddly on him, and Geralt goes cold. 

Jaskier’s too thin, the kind of lean that builds up over months of never quite eating enough. His eyes are wary, his hair cut close in a style that went out of fashion two decades back. He’s shaking a little, and fear comes off him in great gusts. He can’t be much younger than the first time they met – aside from the weight and the hair, he’s entirely familiar – but he has never been scared before. 

Geralt knows to his bones this is a Jaskier he’s never met. 

He wants to curse himself for not considering that possibility. Instead he stays still, tries to look unthreatening, though he’s not sure how best to do that. A young man, waking up in a strange bed, next to a strange, much older man – there are few good ways to get to that outcome. 

“Who the fuck are you?” Jaskier says, voice almost steady. His hands are shaking by his sides.

“Listen,” Geralt says, slowly. “I know this must be unsettling, but if you’ll hear me out—”

“I don’t _think_ so,” Jaskier hisses, starting to edge around the room, and Geralt gets out of bed to stand in front of the door. He doesn’t want to frighten Jaskier more than he has already, so he stays as far away as possible in the confines of the small room, but he can’t risk him running.

“Please, Jaskier, just listen—”

Jaskier freezes, his eyes darting from side to side like an animal caught in a trap. “How do you know that name?” he cries, and then without pausing for breath he takes a step back to the window, slides out and is gone. 

Geralt, startled, is too slow. By the time he follows, using the low roof as a ledge to jump the short distance to the alley, all he can hear is the fading sound of Jaskier’s bare feet on cobbles, running as fast as they can. He could track him, of course, but he’s scared the man enough already, and if he’s guessed the age right, this is currently Jaskier’s home. He won’t leave before Geralt and Yennefer have a chance to figure this out. 

It’s the sensible thing to do, waiting, but the decision sits poorly with him. He returns to the room, stands at the window as if Jaskier might come back at any minute. It’s easier than looking at the bags, the lute, the notebook, the detritus of a much-loved life that has vanished as if it never existed. 

After a time he sits at the table and finds himself staring at the notebook. He shouldn’t, he knows, but Jaskier lives in those pages, and before he can stop himself he begins skimming through it. Mostly it’s music, lyrics scrawled and scratched out beneath the staves. And then, in the last few entries, it’s something else entirely. 

_Things you need to know:  
It’s 1264. You seem to be losing your memory.  
Also, Geralt likes you now.  
Ciri’s in danger, call her Fiona in public. _

_Yennefer seems to like you now too; so far, it isn’t obviously a trap.  
Geralt and Yennefer are maybe not fucking anymore? Unconfirmed.  
Geralt **really** seems to like you now. No, **really**.  
There’s a song called Her Sweet Kiss that someone requested. The sheetnotes are earlier in the book. Possibly about Yennefer.  
It’s 1264, and Ciri is Geralt’s Child of Surprise, and there’s a war going on, and people are looking for her. Seriously, call her Fiona. _

_Apparently I’m fucking Geralt. No, honestly, this isn’t a trick, would I lie about that? I’m fucking Geralt!_

There are two and a half pages of notes in Jaskier’s neat script, only a little hesitant in places: things he observed, speculation, advice. All this time Geralt thought he was the one in control of the situation; of _course_ Jaskier knew all along. Of course he figured it out first. 

The last entry seems tired, somehow, the writing less careful. It reads: 

_I don’t know what half of these notes mean. I don’t know what the fuck is happening. I’m not sure Geralt knows either; maybe he does; he was acting very strangely today. But I do know this, future me, or old me, or whoever reads this next: stick with Geralt. Whatever else happens, he’ll keep you safe._

“Fuck,” Geralt says. He knows Jaskier meant it; that was one belief that never wavered. And yet the very next day, Geralt scared him away just by existing. 

When Yennefer returns, he’s still sitting there, staring out of the window, one hand resting gently on the book. He fills her in as quickly and neutrally as he can manage, and waits while she processes the news. 

“We’ve been looking at this all wrong,” she says, eventually, and he looks up at her, attention caught. 

“How?”

“We thought it had to be about Ciri, because everything in our lives revolves around her. But if Nilfgaard had a mage skilled in memory work in their employ, why would they target Jaskier? They could go after you, or me – fuck, they could go after Ciri, make her run from us straight into their arms. And the spell’s gone on too long, now. There’s no reason one of our enemies would want the bard to forget both of us entirely, what good would that do them?”

Geralt feels the truth of it settle slowly into his gut. She’s right. They’ve been blind. “And if it’s not about us…” he says. 

“Then it’s about Jaskier,” Yennefer agrees. Her eyes are sparking, furious. “Someone from his past. His long-ago past, if he’s a student again.” 

“And if it’s that,” Geralt says, “we have something to go on.” He pauses, thinks back over two decades’ worth of unceasing talk that he always pretended not to listen to, and tries to remember if the bard ever spoke of his life before university. He can’t think of a single time. 

Yennefer nods. Chaos is building in the air around her, Geralt can taste it, ozone and salt, waiting to strike.

He stands, and goes to get his swords. They’re tracking a monster, he realises, as he should have realised two days ago. That, he can do.


	2. Chapter 2

### Jaskier, after

The city is _wrong_. 

The streets are familiar, and he runs through them thoughtlessly, tracing the twists and turns he knows well. But the clothes are strange, and he could have sworn there was a jeweller on the corner of that street, not a bookshop, and the paint on the town hall is faded, and he doesn’t understand. Is he awake? Is he dreaming? 

When he first woke in the strange room not an hour before, he figured he’d had too much to drink and found someone to take advantage of him. He was even a little impressed: the man was impossibly striking, far out of his league, though men seeking men couldn’t afford to be picky. He was usually too cautious for such dalliances; he’d stuck to women religiously since his arrival at university three years before; but he could see why he’d been swayed by such a specimen. 

But then the man opened his eyes and Julian realised he wasn’t a man at all. What was he _thinking_? How drunk had he _been_? 

And then the witcher called him Jaskier. 

It was all wrong, and the only thing he could think to do was find somewhere familiar. The university island is blessedly unchanged, its golden stones serene and solid as they’ve been for centuries and will be for centuries more. He skirts the main quad, angles past the temple, and finds himself at last at the arch into the dormitory building. 

Piotr is standing outside. 

Julian comes to a sudden, startled halt as the world reshapes itself anew. 

Whatever dreamlike state is hanging over either him or the city, Piotr is as unaffected as the buildings around him. He’s exactly the same tall, spare, humourless man Julian remembers. He just doesn’t know what he’s doing here. His parents were quite clear, after the argument last summer: if he wanted to continue his studies, he would do it alone. 

He hesitates, half considering whether to run, but then Piotr spots him. The man looks strangely relieved. He walks towards him, and Julian is suddenly terribly conscious of the way he must look right now: no shoes, hair untidy, doublet unbuttoned. Piotr is always so proper, and Julian always feels shamed in his presence. He pulls himself straighter to stave off the embarrassment. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, letting his voice shade a little more formal and correct. He’s mostly lost the noble accent – it’s no fun trawling the inns and the shops if people think you don’t belong – but it’s always there, waiting to be used. 

“I’m sorry to be the one to say, my lord,” Piotr says. “It’s your father. He died ten days ago.” 

Julian takes a step back, is hardly aware he’s doing it through the rush in his head that blanks out all thought. The world goes flat and unreal again. His father can’t be dead. The last time he saw him, he was hale enough to be red-faced from shouting, the same towering presence he’d always been. “He – what – _how_?”

“It was quick,” Piotr says, a certain dour sympathy in his tone. “He was out riding, and his heart gave way, the healer said. He was dead before he fell from the horse.” 

“I don’t… fuck.” Julian shakes his head. He’s not sure if he feels anything, beyond disbelief. “My mother?”

“The Countess needs you,” Piotr says. “She sent me to get you. I’ve been waiting since last night; you weren’t in your rooms and no one knew where to find you.”

Ah, that’s familiar, Julian’s been hearing that stern disapproval his entire life. “I was… with friends,” he murmurs, because he’s emphatically not going to tell his father’s seneschal that he slept with a strange man, especially a witcher, and especially one who knew things about Julian that he shouldn’t. Unless he’d told him he was called Jaskier. But why would he? He has plenty of other false names he uses when he wants to be secret. 

Piotr clears his throat, and Julian returns with a jolt. “Regardless, you’re here now. We should go.” 

When he left, last summer, he swore that he would never go back. He clings to that vow a moment. He could say no. He could refuse the responsibility, the way they rejected him, stay far away in this city he loves which is a better home than Lettenhove ever was. But his mother… He thinks of her alone in that echoing hall, and finds he can’t bear it. 

“Yes,” he says, and falls back into the behaviour that was beaten into him: stand tall, speak rarely, behave respectably, where respectable means quiet and boring and joyless. “I’ll just go get my things.” 

“No need for that,” Piotr says, swiftly. “I spoke to the warden, it’s all worked out, they’ll send your trunk on.” 

Julian steps forward, half planning to brush past him. “My lute,” he protests, “at least let me—” 

“My lord,” Piotr says, and makes it sound like _you idiot_ , “you have many more instruments at the house, let’s not waste time.” 

It’s true, but it’s also not true. Julian wants his lute, more than anything, it’s precious to him— But then he can’t quite think why. It’s just a practise instrument, no better quality than any of the ones he left behind. There’s no reason for this strange intense longing. He shakes his head, confused, and gives in. 

“Yes,” he says, “all right,” and lets Piotr lead him away, back across the university to the bridge into town, where a man is waiting for them. Julian doesn’t recognise him: he’s middling height, middling width, mousy hair – but his eyes are a depthless green and everything about him makes Julian feel uneasy. He’s cradling a box in his arms, packed with wood shavings. As Julian gets close he catches a glimpse of a glass bottle, before the man lowers the box to the ground and nods at Piotr. 

“This is the viscount then?”

“Earl, now,” Piotr says solemnly and, oh, _fuck_ , he didn’t think of that, fuck. He swallows, horrified, and almost turns to flee, but he has his father’s voice in his ear, screaming at him about duty, and it’s all so odd, it’s all happening too fast, he can’t do anything but stand there, frozen. “My lord,” Piotr goes on, “allow me to introduce Marcin of Lyria. I’ve hired him to portal us home.” 

Julian nods, automatically, his mind still fixed on that terrible notion. Earl Julian. Earl Julian de Lettenhove. It’s like putting your clothes on back to front. He can’t make it fit. 

“It’s good to meet you,” Marcin the mage says. There’s something darkly sardonic in his tone, almost as if he’s amused. Julian doesn’t understand. He looks down instead, unsettled, and sees that the shavings in the box have shifted, revealing what’s inside. It’s a nondescript glass bottle, sealed with cork and wax, but what it contains is beautiful: a multitude of colours, shifting and roiling like oil through water, shimmering in the early morning light. 

“What’s that?” Julian asks. He can’t tear his eyes away. 

Marcin looks down, and a small, cruel smile crosses his lips. “Nothing that need concern you, my lord,” he says, softly. He hoists the box up with one hand, so Julian can’t see the bottle anymore, and it feels heartbreaking somehow. With his other hand the mage opens a portal, shining green in the air. 

It’s just one more weirdness after a morning full of them. Julian clenches his fists, and walks through. 

Lettenhove has never been a particularly rich or particularly notable land. There are stories passed down of prowess in battle, distant relatives who married distant branches of royalty, but that was all centuries ago. Its lords have a title grander than their true importance, and less money than they should. Fortunately, there are always enough daughters of duchesses and counts with substantial dowries willing to marry an earl. Julian’s own mother paid for a complete refit of the hall. And their tenants pay for the rest. 

It’s a small place, controlled by small people, and Julian has itched to leave it since before he understood why. His parents always found him a bother, sending him first to the temple school and then to university, but Oxenfurt showed him what he was missing, and he never thought he’d return. He knows they wished they’d had a different heir, or at least siblings to choose from; he wished first not to disappoint, and when that proved impossible, not to give way. 

Walking through the portal feels a little like giving way, like all the determination he had in their last fight has been spent, leaving him trapped here. 

Once they’ve arrived, the mage draws a new portal in the air, nods at Piotr, and leaves, taking the box and its contents with him. Julian feels his skin prickle as he goes, but shrugs it off. He’s not sure he likes magic very much. 

He squares his shoulders and goes into the hall. 

It’s worse than he remembers: darker, smaller somehow too. The air in the wood-panelled entrance is thick with dust, which is unlike both his mother and Piotr’s standards, and there’s a marked lack of servants hustling about. Perhaps they’re entitled to a holiday when the earl dies, it’s the kind of obscure tradition his family loves. 

He walks into the small reception room, where his mother is usually to be found; the room is easier to heat than some of the larger spaces. His father would be outdoors, as often as he could manage, riding or examining the nearby tenants’ lands. Julian always suspected it was down to a mix of wanting to seem important, visiting the women he aimed to bed, and avoiding his wife. He’s not sure if his parents were ever happy; if they were, he never saw it. 

There’s a fire blazing in the hearth, and his mother is sitting at a table before it, her embroidery in her lap. He never saw her finish a piece, it was just part of her armour: the respectable Countess, quite at home. 

She stands up when he enters and comes to him. She’s still a striking woman; she was just nineteen when he was born, and the years of disappointment after might have twisted her spirit but not her looks. She has his blue eyes, matched with fairer skin and hair, and is wearing a mourning gown in glossy black that doesn’t suit her. 

“We’ll have to see about getting you some suitable clothes,” she says. 

Julian looks down at his crumpled rust-coloured doublet and feels very much like a child who’s ripped his trousers. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, maintaining the proper form, though he doubts she is particularly sorry either. 

She suppresses a smile, confirming the theory. “Julian,” she says. “It’s very good to see you.” 

The tone is surprisingly sincere, and leaves him briefly struggling for words. He has no idea what comes after – certainly there is some ritual to follow, but he never paid much attention to such things after the age of eleven or so, when he decided he’d rather die than live correctly.

“You too,” he says eventually. It’s not completely false – she’s his mother, after all, he does have some fond memories, and she’s at least familiar. He wonders, awkwardly, if he should try and hug her, but it would be unprecedented since his voice dropped and he can’t quite picture it. “Is he— should I— see him?”

“He’s in the crypt,” she says. “We held the burial a week back, it’s best not to linger. I’ll show you.” 

Julian follows her out of the house and into the grounds – noting without curiosity the same lack ground staff as house staff – to the temple and down into the crypt. His father’s last resting place is a plain stone sarcophagus; the engraving and the effigy yet to be completed. He puts a hand on the cold surface and tries to think of something to say. But the man was always a distant, forbidding presence, barely there when Julian was a child, and perpetually angry later, when Julian failed in his schooling or his training as he usually did, and the only memories that come easily to mind are him shouting, or sternly silent, or nodding at Piotr to organise yet another thrashing to bring him in line. 

It isn’t the stuff eulogies are made of and in the end he simply turns away. “What now?” he asks. He’s come, he’s paid his respects, such as they are, and while he’s sure that his mother will want him to stay a while, he’s already half contemplating his escape. They cut him off last summer and he has no obligation to them now, no matter what she might think. 

She meets his eyes, and he tries to read them in the dim light, but they’re just blank; she rarely gives much away. “You’re tired,” she says, “and worn from travel. Go rest, and we can discuss everything else later.” 

It’s possibly more considerate than he’s ever known her, and so wordlessly he does as he’s bid, returning to the hall, up the stairs to his childhood bedroom (which has been stripped of all trace of him, he can’t help but notice). Someone has left a pitcher of water, and a tray with small beer and bread and cheese, and he washes his face, eats the food. A wave of weariness rises through his body, leaving him on the edge of tears, and he climbs into bed, falling asleep almost before he finishes pulling the covers up around him. 

When he wakes again the light has faded; he slept through the bulk of the day. The clothes he left in a pile on the floor are gone, and there’s a neatly folded black outfit and clean white shirt on the dresser in its place. He gets dressed, enjoying the quality of the fabric, resenting the colour and the ridiculous hose and shoes. Only people who never intend to do anything wear such delicate things; it’s possibly the first warning shot from his mother’s side. 

He turns left at the bottom of the stairs into the family dining hall. The formal banqueting hall stretches the full length of the back of the building, but is never used except when higher-ranked nobles visit (which hasn’t happened in his lifetime) and once a year for the harvest ball. All the furniture is covered, and the dull portraits of Lettenhoves past left to gather dust. Julian used to spend hours under that table, hiding from his tutors. 

The family dining hall still seats twelve of course, but only two places are laid, at one corner of the table. His mother is already seated and she nods, satisfied, when she sees him looking presentable. 

“Dinner will be served shortly,” she tells him. “I thought we ought to discuss business first.”

Julian draws on all the unhappy years he’s lived in this house to bolster his courage. He remains standing. “There’s no business to discuss.” 

His mother never does anything so uncouth as _laugh_ , but she allows herself a thin smile. “Don’t be foolish, Julian. You’re the earl now. You have responsibilities.” 

_You have responsibilities_ was the main refrain of his childhood, trotted out whenever he misbehaved, talked back or spent longer at his music than fencing practice. As far as Julian could tell, his main responsibility was to be miserable. 

“I won’t take the title,” he says. “I don’t want this life.”

“It’s not a question of _want_ ,” his mother snaps. “You don’t get to choose.”

“I can,” he responds. He looked it up, it was one of the first things he did in the library at Oxenfurt. “I can abjure it. The protocol is quite simple.” 

“You always were such a _child_ ,” she sighs. “Sit down, please. Let’s talk about this sensibly.” 

Reluctantly, he does. Her face, up close, is smooth and hard, like glass. “I know you would have preferred a different son,” he says, trying to be sensible as suggested. “But this is who I am, and I have other plans. You think I ought to do my duty but I would be terrible at it. Surely it’d be better for the estate to pass to someone more suited? Come to that, why don’t you run it?”

“I’m a woman,” his mother says, as if that’s a winning argument. 

“So? There are female queens, for Melitele’s sake!”

“None worthy of the title,” she sniffs. “There’s no point in arguing, Julian. You’re home, and you will inherit, and you will marry, and the future of Lettenhove will be secured.” She speaks like every word is a stone, building into a solid wall around him. They’ve been trying to trap him his whole life. He can’t allow it. Even if it means breaking what little heart she has, he can’t do it.

“I won’t,” he says, throat going dry, pulse racing. He wonders if he’s too old for her to make Piotr take him out to the stables and cane him. He suspects she’d give it a try. 

Her disdain has never lost its power to hurt. “I had dreams when I was your age,” she says, and for the first time he sees something alive in her face. “All children do. And then I married, and I grew up, and I did what I was bound to do. And now you must too.” 

“And was it worth it?” he demands, flinging one hand out at the cold, dark room they’re in, the empty echoing spaces of the hall, the rigid way she sits as if unbending, even for a moment, would be the end of her. 

“It will be worth it,” his mother says, eyes empty again, “when you _do as you’re told_.”

“So it’s about how I reflect on you, rather than anything about me? I made what I want clear a year back, and you threw me out without a penny and I _survived_. You don’t have any power over me. You don’t have anything I need.”

“Julian,” she says. It’s her most sombre tone, the one that tells him he’s gone too far and if he doesn’t behave he’ll be punished. “Let me ask you again. Will you do your duty to your father, this estate, _me_?”

He’s not a child any more, and he’s not scared of her. “No. I’m sorry. But no.” 

She lets out a long breath and slumps slightly in her chair. “Very well.” There’s resignation in the words. She lifts the small bell to summon the servant and rings it. 

For a moment Julian almost wonders if that’s the end of it, before the door opens and Marcin the mage comes in. 

“My son is being his usual stubborn self,” his mother says, sounding almost bored. “Please restrain him.” 

“Milady,” the mage says, a twist to his lips. He raises a finger and beckons, and Julian feels invisible bonds circling his body, around his legs, his arms, his hands pulled back behind the chair as if there’s a rope fastening them there.

“What the fuck!” he cries out, thrashes briefly, but the ties don’t budge an inch. 

“Language,” his mother says, “or shall I have Marcin gag you?” 

She might as well be discussing the evening menu for all the colour in her voice. Julian closes his mouth, bewildered and afraid. He barely recognises her, suddenly. He doesn’t know what she’s capable of. 

“You didn’t go far enough,” she says to Marcin. “Do it again.” 

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The spell was slower to take hold than I anticipated and I’ve exhausted my ingredients.” 

“I see,” she says, crossly. Julian thinks, _spell?_ He certainly doesn’t _feel_ any different, and if it was meant to make him more obedient, it’s clearly backfired. “We’ll have to try the alternate route.” 

“Certainly, milady. Shall I prepare to cast it now?” 

“What are you talking about?” Julian cries, desperate and confused. His mother looks at him once, as if he’s beneath her notice; there’s nothing human in her at all. He thinks, _men are the worst monsters_ and has no idea why. 

“No,” she says, considering. “Not yet. I’ll give my son a final chance to mend his ways. Would you accompany him upstairs?”

“As you wish,” Marcin says, bowing. He turns to Julian, and says, “walk.” 

Julian’s mind is completely clear. It just isn’t connected to his body anymore. He rises from the table, and bows low. 

“A nice touch, Marcin,” his mother says. “Perhaps I should just keep you here to manage him forever.” 

“You couldn’t afford it,” the mage tells her. He steps closer to Julian, tilts his head, and runs a finger down his chest. “A shame. It’s so rare I get to do anything creative.” 

Julian wants to spit, to scream, to run. He can’t do anything, though, except follow the mage out of the dining hall and up the stairs to his father’s study. Marcin walks him through the door and then closes it behind him. The heavy lock turns. 

There’s no furniture in the study anymore. The windows have iron bars. There’s a straw pallet on one side of the room, a bucket on the other. 

The enchantment lifts and Julian falls to his knees in its wake. She _planned_ this.

That first night, he’s too upset to do anything but cry like the child she called him, and fall into an uneasy sleep. By the morning, though, he’s determined to be a nuisance. Give her a taste of what she can expect if she keeps him locked up like this. He focuses on the outrage and the anger. If he lets the other feelings in, they’ll break him. 

So instead of letting himself think he begins to sing all the bawdiest songs he knows, and since he’s been a student for three years, there are rather a lot. He’s six rounds into _The Fishmonger’s Daughter_ when the key turns in the lock and his mother appears in the door. 

Julian intended to run, but the minute the door opens he finds himself tied by invisible rope again, so he simply bares his teeth and starts on a seventh chorus. 

She regards him as if he’s beneath contempt. “I did warn you,” she says. “ _Language_ , Julian.” She inclines her head, turns to where Marcin must be standing in the corridor. “Gag him.” 

“Mama,” Julian says, shocked enough to revert to the endearment she forbade when he turned five. And then something cold settles in his throat, seeps down into his lungs, and when he tries to speak again there’s no sound. He mouths, _no!_ but she simply smiles at him, grimly, and turns to go. 

“I’m giving you a week to come to your senses,” she says as she leaves. “And if you’re not prepared to be a good, obedient boy at the end of it, Marcin will take your memories and I’ll start from scratch. Perhaps I’ll get it right, next time.” 

He starts to shake. His mother has always been honest. She carries out her promises. So his options are to not be him, or to be a him he can’t live with. Either way it means dying. 

Time passes. They bring him food and he eats it. His mother comes to talk to him, speaks of duty and respect, and he turns his head to the wall and refuses to listen. He plays music in his head until the quiet makes the music go away, and then he daydreams instead. He dreams of being Jaskier the bard, renowned across the Continent. He likes that name. He’s always kept it secret, never shared it with anyone. The plan was to wait until he graduated and then start using it on the road, to become someone different, someone no one had expectations of. 

It’s frivolous and common and pretty, the name he selected for himself. He chose it because it’s everything his parents hate, and he’s been holding it close to his heart for years, for all the good it seems likely to do him. The only person who’s ever called him it was a stranger in an inn, but that feels like a dream now too, like all his years at Oxenfurt are fading into nothingness. Did he really get away? Did he think he could have a life? 

And then, after the minutes fade into hours and the hours turn into days, suddenly it’s not quiet anymore. There’s an explosion, and a man with amber eyes kneeling in front of him, looking at him as if all he’s ever wanted is to see Julian again. 

The man’s name is Geralt. He’s a witcher. The woman’s name is Yennefer. She’s a sorceress. Geralt says they’ve known each other for longer than Julian’s been alive. 

They both keep calling him Jaskier. 

After the sorceress gave him his voice back, and the witcher helped him to stand, they took him downstairs into the small dining room and started telling him impossible things. They also gave him a notebook full of songs he’s never heard of, written in a hand he knows only too well, as if it would help convince him. 

He feels like he never left his father’s study, like dream is piling upon dream and he’s underneath all of them, a long way down with no way out. 

“Jaskier,” the witcher says, as the silence stretches. “Talk to us.” 

That’s funny. No one’s ever encouraged him to talk _more_. He says, “that’s not my name.” 

There’s a pause. “I don’t know what else to call you,” the witcher says. 

“Seriously? You’ve known me for years and you never knew my name?” 

The witcher winces. It’s small, but Julian sees it, as if he’s used to reading tiny flickers of expression on the man’s unmoving face. “You only ever called yourself Jaskier,” he explains. 

“It’s Julian,” Julian says. Though maybe his real name is less real than the name he’s apparently had for longer than he’s been alive. The thought is giving him a headache. “I’m seventeen years old. I’m a student at Oxenfurt university. I don’t know who you are!” 

“We’re friends,” the witcher says, though he looks as though it pains him. There’s a story there; Julian’s good at spotting those. He just doesn’t care at the moment. If they’re telling the truth, he’s lost a whole lifetime. All that remains are the scraps that these two strangers can tell him, and a book full of someone else’s music. It can’t be true. He won’t believe it. 

Abruptly he asks, “Where’s my mother? And the mage?” 

The sorceress and the witcher exchange looks. Eventually, she says, “The mage fled when we arrived. No matter, I’ll find him. Your mother is in her bedroom.” 

“I want to see her,” Julian says. He stands up, and finds the witcher standing before him before he’s halfway to the door. The man moves fast. He’d be impressed, if he wasn’t so angry. “Please don’t stop me.” 

“Are you sure?” the man asks. 

“She’s my _mother_ ,” he says, his voice cracking slightly, and he’s not sure what the witcher reads into that, but he nods, curtly, and moves aside to let Julian go. He follows him, though, a silent shadow up the stairs, to the left, into the master bedroom. The door isn’t even locked, though it’s not like there’s anywhere she would go. 

His mother is sitting in an armchair by the window, her back to him. There’s a man he doesn’t recognise standing by the fire, though when he looks again he is more familiar, build and nose and lips like Piotr’s. “Who are you?” Julian asks him. 

“Jacek,” the man says. “Piotr was my father.” 

When Julian left Lettenhove for the last time, aged sixteen, Piotr’s son was eleven years old. He stares at Jacek until the staring starts to make him dizzy. His head feels like it’s full of water, his thoughts drifting on the tide. “Go away,” he says. 

Behind him, the witcher makes a noise of protest, and Julian lifts his hand up. “It’s not his fault,” he says. “His family have always been in service, they pride themselves on it. He wouldn’t know how to disobey even if he wanted to.” He turns away from Jacek. “Go on, get lost.” 

He hears the man leave. He closes his eyes for a moment, and moves towards the window. 

“You see, you can be commanding when you put your mind to it.” 

It’s his mother’s voice but it isn’t. It’s softer, like the words take greater effort, and a little bit hoarse at the edges. He rounds the armchair, and sees her in the light. 

Her neatly plaited hair is quite white. There are lines on her forehead, around her eyes, two deep creases either side of her mouth. A lifetime of disappointment and disapproval finally written on her skin. 

He looks at her for a long time, until she frowns at him, and says, “had your fill? I must admit, I rather liked the glamour.”

“You’re old,” he says, stupidly. 

“I’m sixty-one,” she agrees. 

“It’s true then,” he says, and almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, the lengths she’s gone to. And for what? “Did you really think if you turned time back I’d be more obedient?”

“I was certain the news of your father’s death would have no impact on the man you became,” she says. “I hoped it might recall the son I remembered to his duty. But no, I didn’t truly believe it. Marcin was going to take the rest of your knowledge, and I planned to convince you and the court that you were my grandson, Julian’s bastard child lately restored to me. There was to have been a riding accident that affected your memory, and left you in my care.” She smiles thinly at him. “It would have made for a most affecting tale.” 

Julian can feel the witcher behind him tense, as if prepared to attack. “You would have taken any choice from me. Trapped me here, in this… cage of a place.” He speaks slowly, as if he can somehow make it untrue. 

Her blue eyes, the ones he inherited, gaze at him steadily. “Why not?” she says. “That’s what happened to me. That’s what being a noble _means_.” 

He feels a great wave of pity rise in him, so sudden and so deep he could drown in it, if he let himself. He waits for it to pass, and afterwards all that remains is exhaustion, and a kind of detached sorrow, as if it’s all happening in a story someone told him once.

“Well, congratulations,” he says. “You’ve stolen my life anyway. But I’m afraid you don’t get to keep it.” He turns away from her, half waiting for her to say something, but there’s only a cold silence. 

As he passes the witcher, the man reaches out an arm to support him, and he realises for the first time that he’s shaking, his legs unsteady beneath him. 

Back downstairs, the sorceress is still standing by the hearth, and the notebook is still lying open on the table in front of him, full of unknown things written by a person that’s gone now. He picks it up and throws it in the fire. 

The witcher growls, and the sorceress shouts something that twists the air. When the echoes of her words die away, the fire has gone out and the book is unburned. Julian glares at her. “If it’s mine, I can do what I like with it, can’t I?”

The sorceress shrugs at him. Her face is smooth and beautiful and Julian knows it’s just a mask. There are terrible things in her eyes. He doesn’t know why she’s so angry. “You would never forgive me, later,” she says. 

“What later?” he demands. “Can you fix this? Give me back my other life?” 

“I’ll find the man who cast the spell,” the sorceress tells him. “Geralt and I can persuade him to do the right thing.” The darkness in her tone makes clear what kind of persuasion she means. 

The witcher clears his throat. “Or you could start again,” he says. “If that’s what you’d rather. Make your own choices, however you like.” 

Julian glances over at him, surprised. “Don’t you want your Jaskier back?” 

“It has to be your decision,” the witcher says. “I hope the man I knew would say he’d enjoyed his life, for the most part, but I’m not going to lie to you: there was pain and poverty and fear in it, as well as songs and love and friendship. I’ll help you, if you choose to stay as you are. You’re still Jaskier, as much now as you were before.” 

“Geralt!” the sorceress hisses, outrage in her voice, but the witcher just smiles at her, and says, “how would you feel if someone gave you a chance to start over?” and for some reason that silences her. 

Julian looks at him for a long time. He seems tired; there are shadows under those eerie golden eyes, and his hair is a little ragged, his clothes crumpled. He’s a stranger, and yet there’s something about the solidity of his body, the weary calm in his face, that Julian trusts without thinking, as if he knows this man in ways that go beyond memory or logic. He remembers running from him that morning in Oxenfurt, and even then knowing that something wasn’t right. 

That morning in Oxenfurt. Piotr. Marcin, walking through the portal, carrying—

He spins around and starts moving, racing up the stairs towards the third-best guest bedroom on the right-hand side of the hall. The best was for royalty, never used; the second-best for family; third-best for the men who came on business. He blesses his mother’s predictability when he bursts through the door and sees the box on the floor at the end of the bed. 

The bottle inside is just as beautiful as he remembers; curls of colour and light undulating within it in an unceasing, almost frantic motion, and yet always creating a pattern just as it seems ready to collapse into chaos. It reminds him of music. He knows it, the same way he knows Geralt, defying all reason. 

Geralt and the sorceress are in the doorway when he stands and turns around, the bottle cradled in his arms. The sorceress’s nostrils are flared; there’s a mix of awe and hunger in her face. “Gods,” she whispers. “When I find that mage, I’m going to ask him _so many questions_ before I kill him.” 

“They’re mine,” he asks, almost desperate. “Aren’t they?”

“I think so,” the sorceress says. She looks slightly worried now. “Jaskier, be careful. I’ve no idea how any of this works.”

“I’m not Jaskier,” Julian says. “But I think I want to be.” 

He lets the bottle fall. Geralt makes to leap forward but he’s already too late; it hits the ground and shatters. 

There’s a blast of noise, like an army of trumpeters playing simultaneously, and the power of it throws Julian back on to the bed, and all he can see is the light swarming around him in every shade of every colour he’s ever seen, warm and wicked and loud and sad and triumphant and _his_. He feels like he’s being ripped apart and put back together, a hundred times a second, and the pain is killing him, and also it’s the best thing that’s ever happened. 

The last thing he thinks, before everything goes dark, is that he really hopes this works out better than the last time he broke a bottle.

### Epilogue: Later still

He’s so young. That’s all Geralt can think. It’s all he’s been thinking, really, since they first reached Lettenhove, after two days of furious interrogation of university records and court gossips. And now Jaskier’s lying unconscious in what was probably his childhood bed, it’s even more marked. His body didn’t change, when he released whatever had been trapped in the container, when the almost-invisible storm of colour knocked him out cold. He’s still too thin, but his face is relaxed, and he looks peaceful, as if the world’s never laid a finger on him. 

That’s not true, Geralt knows. In fact, Jaskier’s ability to take a kicking – whether in the form of words or actual kicks – and come up smiling makes much more sense now Geralt’s met his mother. He clearly had a lot of practice letting casual cruelty wash over him. When Geralt thinks about the way he treated Jaskier back then… Well. He already had plenty of regrets about the way he used to treat Jaskier, but they’re much more raw now. 

The Countess is still in her bedroom. Jacek takes her food, dutifully. Geralt has no interest in talking to the woman; he plans to be out of here the minute Jaskier wakes up. Yennefer went to consult her teacher over in Aretuza, but if she doesn’t return in time she knows to find them at Kaer Morhen. 

In the end, though, when Yennefer comes back nothing’s changed: Jaskier hasn’t stirred at all, a full day later. The portal opens in the corner of the bedroom, and she steps through wearing a dark green gown that makes her eyes even more violet. “Fucking everything that Tissaia fucking owns is green,” she says by way of greeting. “Is the bard still snoring?” 

Geralt ignores her ill temper; Aretuza always has that effect on her. “Did you learn anything?”

She shrugs. “Tissaia hasn’t heard of any time manipulation spell that also preserves the memories. She’s going to set people after this Marcin too. Could be useful,” she adds, bitterly. “She thinks that if they _were_ his memories in the bottle, they ought to have returned to him. There was a lot of magical theory at that point which I won’t subject you to, but the gist is that they should have known where they belonged.” 

“We’ll see,” Geralt says, curt.

Yennefer comes to sit by him. “You’re angry,” she tells him, as if he didn’t know. 

“It was foolish,” he bites out. “He had no idea what he was doing. Anything could have happened.” 

She laughs, softly, and places a hand on his. “I always knew people don’t really change.” 

“I have,” Geralt says. “We could have had a second chance. I might’ve got it right this time.” 

Yennefer is quiet for a long time, before she squeezes his hand. “It’s dangerous thinking like that,” she says. “That’s what made his mother do this in the first place.”

Geralt bows his head. “I don’t want to lose him.” 

The laugh is louder this time. “He’s stuck to you like shit on a shoe for over twenty years,” she says fondly. “I suspect you’re not getting rid of him now, whatever happens.” 

She wanders off – Geralt imagines she’s examining the hall, potentially with an eye to stealing parts of it – and he waits. He meditates for the odd hour here and there, but mostly he waits. Jaskier’s notebook is on the table by the bed, and he thinks about what’s written there: _stick with Geralt. He’ll keep you safe._ He will, he vows. Whatever version of Jaskier remains, he will be protected. 

Jaskier sleeps another night through, and wakes just as the dawn light comes through the window. He yawns, rolls over, sees Geralt, blinks, and says, “why the fuck are we still in Lettenhove?”

“...you were unconscious,” Geralt says, “after smashing an arcane object without care for the consequences.” 

“But I could have been unconscious anywhere,” Jaskier points out. His tone is cross but his eyes are bright. “And frankly anywhere would have been preferable to this fucking dump.” 

“You remember,” Geralt says, feeling a smile break over his face as the relief hits him, warm and gold as honey. 

“I do,” Jaskier says. He pulls back the covers, snaps his fingers at Geralt. “Clothes, please; if I have to stay here a second longer than necessary I’ll scream.” 

They brought Jaskier’s pack with them from the inn; Geralt throws it over, and Jaskier puts on the first doublet and breeches he can find. They don’t match, and they don’t fit either. “I don’t have my body back,” Jaskier says. His hands are shaking a little, and Geralt moves towards him to offer what little comfort he can, before Jaskier continues, “I’ll need a whole new wardrobe! Fuck.” 

“You’re impossible,” Geralt says. 

“Apparently,” Jaskier says. His eyes are blue and clear and depthless; hard to read. Geralt goes to him anyway, and folds him into a hug. Jaskier squawks.

“I missed you,” Geralt says, the words rumbling into Jaskier’s ear. 

“I missed you too,” Jaskier says. “Even when I didn’t know I should.” He pulls back, his face full of a strong emotion Geralt can’t quite interpret. Wonder, perhaps. “Now please can we get out of here?” 

Geralt follows him downstairs, pack in one hand, sword in the other. Jaskier marches out of the main entrance and pauses on the great sweeping driveway, heart beating faster than the exertion would warrant. Yennefer appears round the corner of the hall. “Where’s Roach?”

“Stabled at an inn not too far away,” Geralt says. He hesitates. “Do you – do you want to say goodbye to your mother?”

Jaskier’s lips press together. “My mother and I said everything we needed to say to each other when I first left home,” he says after a moment. “And then she decided we should say it to each other all over again this week. So, no, Geralt, there’s no point. She doesn’t want me and I can’t help her, and I’ve had years to accustom myself to those facts. I only wish she’d done the same.” 

“All right,” Geralt says. He knows it’s not that simple – can see the grief and anger in every tensed muscle – but he doesn’t push it; it’s Jaskier’s choice. 

As Yennefer joins them to open the portal back to the stables to fetch Roach before they travel on to Kaer Morhen, he catches Jaskier looking over his shoulder. There’s a twitch of the curtain in one of the windows over the entrance. Perhaps the shape of a figure standing there, watching them go. But she doesn’t show herself, and after a second Jaskier turns away, and doesn’t look back again. 

Kaer Morhen is forbidding and cold; they’ve long since given up trying to stop the wind howling through, and instead pile the fires high with wood and the beds high with furs. And yet for all its grim dark stone and empty, echoing halls, Geralt finds it more homely than any of the ornately decorated rooms at Lettenhove. 

From the way Jaskier’s shoulders relax as they step into the courtyard, he may feel the same. 

There’s a blur of pale hair and flying cloak and then Ciri is throwing herself at Jaskier, who stumbles under her weight. “Sweetheart!” he says, and she untangles herself from him and prods at his chest, giggling. 

“Do you know who I am now?” she demands.

Jaskier picks her up again and twirls her round. “Her Highness the Princess Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon,” he recites. “Lion Cub of Cintra, teller of tall tales, scrounger of apple cake, and all-round menace.” He drops her and bends forward, entirely out of breath. 

“You were such a skinny kid!” she tells him, delighted. 

“I haven’t traipsed all over the Continent following Geralt yet,” he says between gasps. “I’m only fit for drinking beer and playing music.” He lets her drag him into the keep. Geralt goes to stable Roach, and when he joins them in the kitchens, Jaskier is halfway through a bowl of bigos, and Ciri is halfway though telling Yennefer about the drills she’s been practising with Vesemir. The familiarity of it kindles something warm in his chest, and he feels his eyes water a little; it’s the change in temperature. 

They spend the day there, none of them willing to be apart from the others. Yennefer and Ciri practise magic and discuss theory; Geralt sorts ingredients for a round of potion distilling; Jaskier strums his lute and makes notes some of the time, and stretches out in front of the fire and dozes for the rest of it. Vesemir appears when it comes time to prepare dinner, a leg of deer over his shoulder, and Geralt helps him make stew. Vesemir nods at Jaskier, once, and otherwise acts as if nothing has happened at all, and Geralt laughs a little inside as he watches Jaskier try to decide if the old man has even noticed. 

After they eat, Vesemir retires to his study; and Ciri starts to nod off at the table so Yennefer takes her to bed; and then it’s just Geralt and Jaskier in front of the dying fire. 

“You lied to me,” Jaskier says suddenly. His eyes are closed, and the shadows make the hollows of his cheeks even more pronounced. “Back in Oxenfurt. You pretended I’d only lost a few months’ worth of memories.” 

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Geralt says, and then thinks better of it. “Not just that. I didn’t know how to explain what we were to each other now, given what we were to each other back then.” 

“It’s so peculiar,” Jaskier says. “I have these kind of… dual memories. What I knew and thought at the time, overlaid with what I know now. I was mostly confused, honestly. You were being so nice to me.”

“I’ve learned,” Geralt says softly. “If I could change it, I would; if I’d had to do it again I would have tried to be better. But I am glad to have you back.” 

“Do you ever think about what would have happened if you’d fucked me when we first met?” Jaskier asks, idly. “I wanted you to do that. Obviously.” 

“Hmmm,” Geralt says, because it _was_ obvious; the way Jaskier’s eyes followed him as he moved, as he fought; the way he smelled, sweet and warm like fresh bread. 

“I can’t decide if I’d have left the next day and spent the rest of my life bragging about bedding a witcher,” Jaskier says, “or if I’d have followed you even harder.” 

“Metaphorically or literally?” Geralt asks and Jaskier gasps in feigned shock, his eyes open wide. 

“Geralt! I am scandalised.” 

“No you’re not.” 

“I’m really not,” he agrees, and then his face turns sombre again. “What _would_ you have done if I hadn’t got my memories back?”

Geralt can’t stop himself from flinching, a little, when he thinks about it; the idea of living with a ghost that wasn’t a ghost, loving what remained while always aware of what was lost. “I would have stayed with you, if you wished it,” he says. “Whatever you wanted.” 

Jaskier stands up and moves to where Geralt’s sitting, wrapping his arms around his chest and resting his chin on Geralt’s head. “Well I have the experience of a forty-something and the stamina of a teenager,” he says, “so what I very much want, right now, is to take you to bed and put both to good use.” 

Geralt grunts, and stands up, sweeping Jaskier off his feet and into his arms. He’s still as long and awkward as he’s always been, but light enough to make it easier to manage, and he carries him all the way to the room they use at the top of one of the towers, Jaskier chuckling delightedly the whole time. 

Someone – Vesemir, most likely – has already set the fire and brought their bags up, and Geralt casts igni to get it going and dumps Jaskier unceremoniously on the bed. He wriggles upright, hands on hips. “Nuh uh,” he says. “You got to take my virginity last time, this is my party.” His voice is low and forceful, and Geralt shivers under the weight of it. 

“All right,” he says. “Where do you want me?” 

Jaskier puts his head on one side, considering. “Clothes off,” he orders. “Hands and knees, on the bed,” and Geralt obeys, feeling his pulse slow, his mind calming. Jaskier strips off his doublet and breeches, goes to rummage in one of the pockets of his pack and comes back to kneel behind Geralt on the bed. He pours a small measure of oil into his hands and starts to massage it into Geralt’s back, pressing into the knots and scars until Geralt hums with pleasure. 

“Fuck, you’re practically purring,” Jaskier says, a smile in his voice, and he reaches underneath to stroke Geralt until he’s fully hard. “Can’t let you get carried away too soon,” he adds, and, fumbling, ties something that feels like one of the leather strips Geralt uses for his hair around the base of his cock, not enough to hurt, but tight enough that he’s not going to be coming any time soon. He groans, and Jaskier flicks at his balls, says, “oh love, I’m going to take _such_ good care of you.” 

Geralt closes his eyes, and lets himself feel: Jaskier’s fingers, slick and careful in his arse, increasing one by one until his whole body throbs with the stretch and the fullness, until the fingers slide out and he moans with the loss of it and Jaskier says, “shhh,” and starts to push in, so gentle, maintaining a slow, steady pace for what seems like hours until at last he speeds up and comes, crying out as he does so. 

Geralt must make some kind of noise also, because Jaskier presses him down onto his side, moving round so that Geralt’s head is nestled on Jaskier’s shoulder, breathing into his neck while Jaskier runs soft fingers down his back. After a time, Jaskier moves his other hand to his own cock, and starts to pull and stroke; Geralt props himself up on his elbow to see.

“No touching,” Jaskier tells him. “This is what I used to do, at night, after I thought you were asleep. I always hoped you were watching. Did you use to watch me, Geralt?”

Warm blood rushes to his face. “Sometimes,” he admits. Waking up, uncertain of what had roused him, to the smell of arousal, soft cut-off breaths. He’d lie still, listening, skin burning, waiting for the sound of release. 

“Ha!” Jaskier says, as if vindicated, then bites his lip, choking off the noises he’s making, tugging harder until he comes again, spending over his chest and Geralt’s. “That’s two,” he gasps. “Gods bless this body, I swear.” He swipes his hand through the mess, gives his fingers to Geralt to suck on. Geralt’s cock jumps as he tastes Jaskier on his tongue. He can’t remember the last time he was this hard, as if all the blood in his body and thoughts in his head are pooled in the lower part of his body, adrift and lost in the sensation. 

Jaskier moves his free hand to Geralt’s cock, stroking and touching till Geralt can hardly bear it; he says, ‘ _please_ , please,” around Jaskier’s fingers, and Jaskier hums to himself. “Get me ready then,” he orders, and Geralt shifts down the bed, takes Jaskier into his mouth and sucks and licks along his length, over the tip, until Jaskier’s hard again, for the third time, Geralt thinks, muzzily; he’s not thinking very much anymore. He’s so warm, and so happy, and so desperate for release, and his thoughts flow slowly through his brain without lingering. 

“Over you go,” Jaskier whispers, and Geralt rolls onto his back, and Jaskier lifts his legs up and slides in without preparation, but Geralt’s still loose and open from before and it’s so much; he clenches his teeth and whines as Jaskier moves faster. “My good boy,” Jaskier murmurs, “such a good boy, there you are, fuck, love, look at you,” and Geralt forces his eyes open to see Jaskier’s beautiful, clever face, hair sticking to his forehead, smart mouth moving, spilling out words of praise and it’s almost too much, and then Jaskier unties the leather one-handed, and speeds up, and Geralt comes before he can take another breath, so hard that the world goes white and empty. 

He surfaces again to the touch of a damp cloth on his skin and Jaskier still talking, repeating the same two words over and over again: “you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine.” 

“I’m yours,” Geralt tells him, and kisses him. 

Jaskier says, fiercely, “everything I ever did got me here, I wouldn’t change it, I don’t regret any of it, this is my life, _mine_ ,” and Geralt holds him as he starts to cry, just a little, strokes through his hair and along the nape of his neck until they both fall seamlessly into sleep. 

Three days later, they’re back in Oxenfurt; Jaskier insistent there wasn’t any bullshit spell in the world that was stopping him playing the damn harvest festival. His youth was the talk of the town for a full day – “magical accident!” Jaskier said cheerily, while Geralt stood and glowered at his side, “isn’t it fun?” – and then some bard Geralt had never heard of slept with some other bard Geralt had never heard of, and no one paid attention at all after that. 

Jaskier’s onstage, and Geralt stands in the crowd with Ciri. It’s late, and she’s likely exhausted, but she’s still whooping and clapping and he knows there’s no chance of getting her to bed until the concert ends. He’ll just have to put up with her mood tomorrow. He doesn’t mind. 

As he holds Ciri’s hand he remembers Pavetta, and wishes that she could have seen how brave her daughter is, how strong and kind and determined. And then spares a thought for the bitter, cold woman in Lettenhove, unable to break free from the prison of the way things have always been, unable to think there might be a better way to find. Geralt feels an uneasy sympathy for her; an uneasy gratitude for what she’s granted him. This miracle, this gift. 

For years, he knows, his heart was a cold, ashen thing, barely a spark remaining. But then there was Jaskier, and Yennefer, and Ciri, and between them they kindled the embers, even as Geralt did his best to drive them away. And now his love burns bright in his chest, and if he had his time again he wouldn’t change a thing. 

Except he has time, now – they all have so much time. He clutches Ciri’s hand tighter, and smiles at Jaskier, and vows not to waste a second of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Details on the dubcon and underage warnings: Geralt initiates sexual contact with Jaskier at a point when he doesn't remember that they're in a relationship; he is puzzled but not unhappy. At the end, Jaskier regains his memories but remains in the body of his seventeen-year-old self, and he and Geralt have sex. 
> 
> In the UK, a viscount is often the eldest son of an earl, so that's what I've made Jaskier. 
> 
> The game map of Oxenfurt doesn't look nearly big enough to support a university and its many thirsty students so I've mostly ignored it. In the middle ages, boys often went to university as young as thirteen and I've followed that here too. 
> 
> I spent quite a long time trying to figure out the dates and ages; if I've got anything wrong I'm sorry. What is time, anyway.
> 
> If you think this whole fic came about to solve the problem of Jaskier ageing by pressing the reset button, you would be correct. 
> 
> I hope you are all keeping safe and well.


End file.
